Terror Threat Extends U.S. Embassy Closings to Aug. 10

At least 19 U.S. embassies and
consulates in predominantly Muslim countries will remain closed
through the week as the State Department stays on guard for
potential terrorist attacks.

Yesterday’s initial one-day closing of 22 U.S. outposts
followed the State Department’s issuance of a worldwide travel
alert warning of planned attacks in the Middle East, North
Africa and South Asia by al-Qaeda or its affiliates. The
decision to extend the selective shutdown through Aug. 10 “is
not an indication of a new threat stream,” Jen Psaki, a
department spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.

“Out of an abundance of caution, we’ve decided to extend
the closure of several embassies and consulates including a
small number of additional posts,” she said. This is “merely
an indication of our commitment to exercise caution.”

President Barack Obama instructed his national-security
team last week to “take all appropriate steps to protect the
American people in light of a potential threat occurring in or
emanating from the Arabian Peninsula,” according to a White
House press release. The terrorist threat that prompted the
closure is “very credible” and “specific as to how enormous
it was going to be,” lawmakers from both parties said.

Essential Staff

Britain’s embassy in Yemen, which was also closed yesterday
because of heightened security concerns, will remain shut until
the end of the Muslim Eid holiday this week, the Foreign Office
said on its website. The mission is operating with only
essential staff. The U.K. has urged all Britons to leave Yemen.

France will keep its embassy in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa,
closed though Aug. 7, the Foreign Ministry in Paris said. The
German mission there remains shut as well, Foreign Ministry
spokesman Andreas Peschke told a news conference in Berlin,
though he said there’s no evidence of specific terror threats.

“High-level people from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
are talking about a major attack,” U.S. Representative C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger of Maryland, the top Democrat on the
House Intelligence committee, said on ABC’s “This Week”
program that aired yesterday. “The good news is that we’ve
picked up intelligence.”

The information includes communications among known
terrorists intercepted by the National Security Agency in recent
days, according to two U.S. officials who asked not to be
identified discussing classified intelligence matters. They
declined to offer specifics about the exchanges, only saying the
content is credible and disturbing.

Dates Given

“This threat was so specific as to how enormous it was
going to be and also certain dates were given,” Representative
Peter King, a New York Republican who serves on both the House
Intelligence and Homeland Security committees, said on “This
Week.” While an attempted attack is most likely to happen in
the Middle East, “It could be in Europe, it could be in the
United States.”

The primary focus is on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,
a terrorist group based in Yemen and a remote part of Saudi
Arabia, according to King and the two U.S. officials.

“This is the most serious threat that I’ve seen in the
last several years,” Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the
top Republican on the chamber’s Intelligence Committee, said on
NBC’s “Meet the Press” program. “There’s been an awful lot of
chatter out there” among terrorists, Chambliss said, noting
it’s “reminiscent of what we saw pre-9/11.”

Twenty-two embassies and other diplomatic posts were closed
yesterday, including in Libya, Egypt, Yemen and Jordan. Some of
them were removed from the list of closures for the week, while
others were added.

Possible Targets

“Current information suggests that al-Qaeda and affiliated
organizations continue to plan terrorist attacks both in the
region and beyond, and that they may focus efforts to conduct
attacks in the period between now and the end of August,” the
department said last week. The attacks “may involve public
transportation systems and other tourist infrastructure.”

The warning of a potential attack by al-Qaeda and other
terrorist organizations is unusual this time partly because the
groups are so “widely dispersed,” said Michael Chertoff, who
was homeland security secretary under President George W. Bush.

“It’s actually quite rare to have this broad and yet so
alarming and specific a warning be publicly disseminated,”
Chertoff, who founded a security consulting company in
Washington, told “This Week.”

Benghazi Attack

The State Department pledged to increase security at
embassies and consulates after the attack on a U.S. mission in
Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012, led to the death of U.S.
Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The Central
Intelligence Agency said it had warned the State Department
repeatedly of terrorist threats in Benghazi before the attack,
according to e-mails released later by the White House.

The State Department had issued a similar warning of
possible attacks before that.

The latest alert and embassy closures may be an effort to
disrupt al-Qaeda operations, according to Michael Hayden, who
served as CIA director under the George W. Bush administration.

The announcements may be designed to put al-Qaeda “on the
back foot, to let them know that we’re alert and we’re on to at
least a portion of this plot line,” Hayden said yesterday on
“Fox News Sunday.”

Too Ambitious

The scale of the attacks discussed in the intercepted al-Qaeda communications, coupled with the fact that the messages
violated the terrorist group’s known rules about avoiding mobile
and satellite phones and online conversations in favor of
couriers, made some intelligence officials suspicious about the
group’s intent, the two U.S. officials said.

The attacks the terrorists discussed were too ambitious in
size and scope to ignore, both officials said, and that may have
been deliberate. It’s also possible the discussions were
intended to put al-Qaeda back in the headlines after years of
foiled plots. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity
because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly.

At the same time, said both officials, it’s not time to
exhale because the list of targets and the timing in the
intercepted communications may have been deliberately
misleading, or the planners may have gone back to the drawing
board after they learned that their plans had been discovered.

The U.S. warning came days after al-Qaeda’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, urged his followers in a speech posted on jihadist
websites to attack U.S. sites as a response to American drone
strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, according to the SITE
Intelligence Group, which monitors terrorist groups.